Most of your objections to the existence of a loving God seem to be based on modern-day American Christianity, which does not contextualize Biblical literature within history, philosophy, science, and anthropology as the Catholic church does.

I'm still trying to choke down that statement. I have GERD.

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John 14:2 :: In my Father's house are many mansions: if it were not so, I would have told you. I go to prepare a place for you.

- And again, Anne, why would the idea of Adam and Eve and the loss of paradise, but the reprieve from a resurrected Jesus, yet mankind's ability to resist a loving god and therefore spend ETERNITY in hell, make sense - while everything else going on in a unbelievably huge 13.7 billion year old universe with blackholes and red dwarfs and stars and millions of galaxies and suns and planets be worth nothing - with only humans on planet earth existing just to get to heaven, be what it is all for?

Most of your objections to the existence of a loving God seem to be based on modern-day American Christianity, which does not contextualize Biblical literature within history, philosophy, science, and anthropology as the Catholic church does.

I'm still trying to choke down that statement. I have GERD.

Yeah, how about Kenyan modern day Christianity, where witches are still burned - surely atheists object to that, maybe even Catholics.

If the earth is 10,000 years old and all peoples sprung from the loins of Adam and Eve and then the population was reduced to about 8 all following a monotheistic religion where they actually wittnessed an impossible storm wipe out all life on earth, Why are there so few monotheistic religions. I could understand a regional differences in the practice of a monotheistic religion and even possibly one or two poly theist religions but with only 4,500 years between the flood and today it is almost impossible explain the world religious makeup.

And to be fair we are even talking about less time because Egyptian culture/religion goes back right to the around the flood. Zeus, hades and Aphrodite, Vishnu have long histories going back into antiquity. So I am to believe that all cultures spawned from one family and one religion, and morphed into most of the world being polytheistic. To further put the kabash on this we also have the tower of babble, here we still have a montheistic culture all working toward the construction of a giant building to reach heaven. God punished people for their evil act by creating different races and languages. So at this point x hundred years after the flood races began to move around the world from a common oral history they completely (absolutely) forgot the oral traditions and invented their own religions.

First, why would your god allow two nescient humanoids to be led off-course by a Talking Snake™? Surely an omniscient being knew the snake was there and had a pretty good idea of what would happen.

Secondly, could you please send Me a Talking Snake™? I've been trying to get one for several years now, and no one's managed to find Me one so far.

Actually Catholicism rejects the literal interpretation of the Bible. So attempting to phrase questions in the form of Bible literalism does nothing to undermine their viewpoint.

However, if they reject Bible literalism, ask them about what methodology that they use in deciding if a particular pronouncement or story within the Bible is correct, or just a divinely inspired fable.(spoilers: the answers is an appeal to authority, which will end up with circular reasoning)

The type of literature, cultural/historical references/context, translation differences/evolution (sociolinguistics), and emic worldview are all taken into account. Frequently, footnotes will point out alternative translations, consistency or disagreement with other areas of scripture and possible explanations, contemporary historical events and whether the biblical account has the same dates as other historical accounts, etc. Good bibles that illustrate the Catholic perspective of scripture would be the Douay, New Jerusalem, or New American. In addition to the footnotes, the introduction will help describe the role of scripture within the whole body of knowledge we have about God. (The best of these versions are those that have the native languages in a column next to the vernacular translation.)There is also most definitely there is an appeal to authority - based on the appointed and elected leadership's assessment of the data and interpretation of the movement of the Holy Spirit (better than one Joe Schmoe’s interpretation of the Holy Spirit, but surely still not perfect). At this point, it’s easy to discount that if you do not believe in the Holy Spirit. However, for me to explain the position of the Church without referencing a Being beyond this earth is like a person trying to explain the sunrise without acknowledging that there’s a universe beyond our atmosphere.

Welcome Anne, it's great to have someone from the mailbox actually show up.

Personally I don't make any effort to read apologists and excusiologists. I've tried a few times over the decades but soon got put off by the special pleading, Pascal's wager, and 'god-of-the-gaps' type of arguments.

Some of the others here will have done a more thorough job I'm sure.

Please feel free to post a list of the Scientists and Philosophers (or just their arguments) you think we ought to take seriously

EDIT: "historians, and anthropologists" too

Thanks, William! I'm working on it. It's hard to figure out where to begin! Fortunately, it's not for a lack of said references. It's just truly difficult to figure out what would be most important/interesting to this crowd. Thank you again for the welcome.

Okay, well I've read through the posts and no one has referenced any specific work s/he has read that is written with a pro-God/Catholic perspective. (Thank you to Hatter23 for at least mentioning it, though. I can relate to the experience of bad/incomplete apologia. It's definitely out there!)

It's difficult for me to understand how one could take a position about whether or not there is a God (which is, as you've experienced, one of the most -if not the most- important questions we can ask ourselves) without trying to "disprove" him/herself first. Isn't that what you do with important questions - try to disprove yourself so that you are sure that you believe what you believe? It seemed to me that the arguments on the wwgha website were quite steeped in mainstream media and biased "history" classes' perspectives, so I tried to give its author & members more credit than that by asking the question (at the beginning of this thread) in the first place. I truly am surprised at the lack of response.

Thank you, however, for responding! All responders brought up perspectives on God (or on people who claim to serve Him) many times. In response to William's request, therefore, I'd be glad to get together a cursory list of the types of works I referenced (philosophy, science, anthropology, etc) to respond to some of those perspectives.

I'll begin with one that I believe answers the website's question about amputees. It's John Paul II's anthropology called Theology of the Body, which describes how God’s nature can be discovered through a study of the human body & relationships. It was laid out in 4 years' worth of Wednesday audiences. This website has the entirety of those audiences: http://www.ewtn.com/library/papaldoc/jp2tbind.htmAnother work that elaborates this is called Love and Responsibility.

These won't only speak to the amputee question; they also describe the Catholic perspective on homosexuality. {And on that note, I will certainly acknowledge with the rest of you that many Christians -Catholics included- have lived out their homophobic perspectives in the name of God. That is wrong and extremely hurtful (and frustrating). If Catholics and Christians properly understood the perspective on homosexuality taken by the Church, the world would be a much better place. The super-duper-condensed version has to do with the idea that man and woman together are made in the image of God. We believe that their union, which produces a child, is abundantly rich with meaning, since the human family is precisely what God gave us to reveal Himself to us. So (and again, please bear in mind this is the cursory explanation, so I'm only sharing the conclusion, not everything that get us there), man+woman+child represents our triune God (Father+Son+Holy Spirit). So, human love is not just about love, nor is it just about procreation; it's about revealing God. Such revelation is not accomplished in homosexual union. (Father and Son are the same gender, you say? God has no gender. Again, I began this entire thread not go back and forth about specific arguments, but rather to reference intelligent and dependable works of philosophy, science, etc. For an elaboration on this explanation, please reference the bodies of literature listed above. Both the Wed audiences (Theology of the Body) and the book (Love and Responsibility) make hearty use of philosophy, science, history, etc.)}Thanks for entertaining that mega-parenthetical digression.

So, would anyone be interested in some more science/philosophy/anthropology/history references?

You do want to disprove G.K. Chesterton’s & C.S. Lewis’ observation that atheists are more dogmatic/unscientific in their thinking than Catholics, don’t you? ;-)(Chesterton & Lewis were learned atheists who converted to Christianity in the 20th century, based on thought & observation.)

It's difficult for me to understand how one could take a position about whether or not there is a God (which is, as you've experienced, one of the most -if not the most- important questions we can ask ourselves) without trying to "disprove" him/herself first. Isn't that what you do with important questions - try to disprove yourself so that you are sure that you believe what you believe?

It all gets considerably easier if you let go of your expectations of why we are atheists first. You're approaching the question from your perspective, based on your personal experiences, which have been processed through your personal filters. I'm quite sure I believe what I believe. I'm equally confident that your assumptions about what my beliefs are do not have any influence on what they actually are.

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You do want to disprove G.K. Chesterton’s & C.S. Lewis’ observation that atheists are more dogmatic/unscientific in their thinking than Catholics, don’t you? ;-)

Well, it sure seems that YOU want someone to want to. I don't generally waste much time worrying about what other people think of me based on a single characteristic that we don't happen to share. Do you?

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(Chesterton & Lewis were learned atheists who converted to Christianity in the 20th century, based on thought & observation.)

I really don't know why you think this is noteworthy. According to Mohammed, Islam is based on thought and observation and I REALLY doubt that's enough to sway your opinion one bit. Why would you think some other random dead people would sway any of ours?

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Thanks for the hearty dialogue!...

Thanks for participating!

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“Be skeptical. But when you get proof, accept proof.” –Michael Specter

How much intellectual work did you put into rejecting the possibility that the hindu gods were real, or the gods of the Kenyan Kikuyu peoples, or the Dogon, or any given native American gods? Was that a big mental exercise for you, where you seriously considered every one before deciding they were not real? Or did you just shrug your shoulders and say "Of course those gods aren't real?"

If it was the latter, that is exactly how I rejected any possibility that the christian god is real. It actually takes very little effort to come to ones senses.

There may be some atheists on this site who are interested in the history of christianity and apologetics and all that stuff. But it is not a universal trait amongst us atheists, and you may or may not get a satisfactory discussion out of the deal.

Oh, and if we atheists are less scientific than catholics, that probably means that when catholics burned scientists at the stake that was merely an experiment in rapid decomposition. Something I've never felt enough interest in to justify killing other human beings for. But I guess I should look at the scientific papers they wrote up after doing in Bruno or something. They might have added to the literature.

After reading part of "that Hideous Strength," I cannot believe Lewis was an atheist of any intellectual stripe. It is just a big strawman cartoon depiction of atheists.

Seriously, atheists who worship Satan?....that's beyond stupid.

Atheist more dogmatic than Christianity. Oh, that's a laugh. unless you think "actually pay attention to evidence" is dogma.

If you are Catholic you're soaked in Dogma. From The Apostle's Creed to infallibility, to transubstantiation...all Dogma. Being atheist means I don't believe in your god just as you don't believe in Santa...that's it.

« Last Edit: September 15, 2013, 12:01:01 AM by Hatter23 »

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An Omnipowerful God needed to sacrifice himself to himself (but only for a long weekend) in order to avert his own wrath against his own creations who he made in a manner knowing that they weren't going to live up to his standards.

At this point, it’s easy to discount that if you do not believe in the Holy Spirit. However, for me to explain the position of the Church without referencing a Being beyond this earth is like a person trying to explain the sunrise without acknowledging that there’s a universe beyond our atmosphere.

You are hiding the circular reasoning. Why should we trust the word of those who state the6 are the ones who state they are guided by the Holy Spirit, when the question of Holy Spirits very existence and what it does is based not upon evidence, but upon the pronouncements of these members of the same authority structure?

I isn't that I do not understand the position of the Church. I was raised Catholic. I just find the position of the Church one great circle of hogwash.

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An Omnipowerful God needed to sacrifice himself to himself (but only for a long weekend) in order to avert his own wrath against his own creations who he made in a manner knowing that they weren't going to live up to his standards.

It's difficult for me to understand how one could take a position about whether or not there is a God...

One need not disprove something when it's sufficient to merely not accept it.

There are lots of things I don't accept. For instance, I don't like schmaltzy lyrics in any genre of music. However, I'm not about to take a PhD in English with a dissertation on poetics for the sole purpose of intellectually justifying to someone else My dislike of a particular tune.

Similarly, as I seem to have been born with a congenital inability to cultivate any sort of religious faith, I don't accept the idea of gods that must be accepted sight unseen. I can accept gods as metaphors and symbols, and I can accept the hypothesis that there may be beings more powerful than humans somewhere in this vast universe, but the idea of an eternally existing but completely undetectable entity of immense power? Absurd. That falls squarely in the category of "I'll believe it when I see it, and not before."

So I've started reading bits of the John Paul II stuff (not too much yet because it's footy finals season here in Australia) but the first thing that strikes me in all the stuff written about God creating "male and female", "eternal law", "precisely as "male and female,"", and the "rib" thing is the glaring omission that "female" was an afterthought. Actually worse than an afterthought - a concession to give Adam a "helper" in response to Adam's request. God first paraded all the animals (presumably both sexes) in front of Adam for Adam to name them and find something he liked:

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Genesis 2 19 Now the Lord God had formed out of the ground all the wild animals and all the birds in the sky. He brought them to the man to see what he would name them; and whatever the man called each living creature, that was its name. 20 So the man gave names to all the livestock, the birds in the sky and all the wild animals.

But for Adam[f] no suitable helper was found.

I've explored this question before, but did God retrofit Adam with a penis including erectile tissue, testicles, sperm etc only after Adam asked for Eve? .... or was all that equipment already there and functioning as intended for the animal parade?

Okay, well I've read through the posts and no one has referenced any specific work s/he has read that is written with a pro-God/Catholic perspective.

Probably for the same reason as nobody reads Pol Pot’s political speeches justifying his regime: we already know they are deceptions and untrue

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I can relate to the experience of bad/incomplete apologia. It's definitely out there!

There is no “good” apologia. “RELIGION, n. A daughter of Hope and Fear, explaining to Ignorance the nature of the Unknowable.

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It's difficult for me to understand how one could take a position about whether or not there is a God […] without trying to "disprove" him/herself first.

Your difficulties are caused by yourself: after years of indoctrination your neurons have probably realigned to accept that which is illogical.

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Isn't that what you do with important questions - try to disprove yourself so that you are sure that you believe what you believe?

Yes, and on the balance of probabilities, there cannot be a god of any sort.

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I'll begin with one that I believe answers the website's question about amputees. It's John Paul II's anthropology called Theology of the Body, which describes how God’s nature can be discovered through a study of the human body & relationships. It was laid out in 4 years' worth of Wednesday audiences. This website has the entirety of those audiences: http://www.ewtn.com/library/papaldoc/jp2tbind.htmAnother work that elaborates this is called Love and Responsibility.

The very facts that (i) you cannot summarise the works you reference and thus give a reason why God will not heal amputees (ii) the amount of words required for an explanation is apparently huge (iii) you have not said whether this is “good” or “bad” apologia, indicate that the reason given for God’s lack of action is not that God does not exist, but that merely mortals have discovered the nature of the Unknowable…

Remarkable…

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These won't only speak to the amputee question; they also describe the Catholic perspective on homosexuality. {And on that note, I will certainly acknowledge with the rest of you that many Christians -Catholics included- have lived out their homophobic perspectives in the name of God. That is wrong and extremely hurtful (and frustrating). If Catholics and Christians properly understood the perspective on homosexuality taken by the Church, the world would be a much better place.

So, we have 2,000 years of the church persecuting homosexuals, and in all that time nobody actually objected. No pope decided to review the issue – surely this indicates that persecuting homosexuals was God’s will? So why does your god now think it might be different?

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We believe that their [a man’s and a woman’s] union, which produces a child, is abundantly rich with meaning,

The only meaning is that asexual reproduction has evolutionary disadvantages. Anything else is bad apologia and vapid wanderings of the imagination in the self-interest of an already very wealthy church.

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So, would anyone be interested in some more science/philosophy/anthropology/history references?

No, we don’t like bad apologia and science and anthropology speak against the supernatural. Science and anthropology like explanations that do not include, “and at this stage there was a miracle…”

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You do want to disprove G.K. Chesterton’s & C.S. Lewis’ observation that atheists are more dogmatic/unscientific in their thinking than Catholics, don’t you? ;-)

I don’t think that Chesterton and Lewis were necessarily wrong. Atheists wish to show the religious that the religious are suffering from a delusion. I don’t know if you have ever tried to convince someone who suffers from a delusion that there is a better way of viewing the world, but, after a lot of discussion that is met with only close-mindedness and apologia, the temptation is to become dogmatic.

I used to work with the mentally ill. A woman believed that a brick in her house was reading her mind and transmitting information to Germany. I had her identify the brick and mark it. I marked it too. The brick removed. When I returned a few days later, her apologist stance was that the wrong brick had been removed… (NO, the marked brick had been removed…)

It is at this stage that some sort of dogmatism kicks in.

I fail to see how your (and other’s) claim that some invisible, timeless, undetectable, sky-pixie takes a deep interest in a single species of animal on a small planet orbiting an insignificant star in one of trillions of galaxies can make any sense at all.

However, to you it all makes sense, doesn't it? (Have you checked all your bricks recently?)

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Nobody says “There are many things that we thought were natural processes, but now know that a god did them.”

The problem, Anne, is that the people you refer to, who concluded that a god existed, predicated their logic and arguments on the presumed fact of that god's existence. In other words, their Achilles heel is their apparent lack of evidence. You don't need logic to justify the existence of something that actually exists and that you have evidence for. There should be mountains of that evidence, unmistakeable as anything else, in the case of a god who presumably intervened in human history for thousands of years. But there is nothing solid. It is all as unseen as the god itself, which allows lots of flexibility in justifying things as being the work of that god - but virtually nothing that can convince the skeptical mind.

Also, I don't think C.S. Lewis was ever actually an atheist (except in the self-described sense). What happened is that he stopped believing in Christianity (or at least the faith he was raised in) - but he went straight into mysticism and the occult from there, both of which are not things that atheists generally put any reliance on. And then later on he was brought back to Christianity by Tolkien. So yes, he did lose his Christian faith and he did start searching for something to replace it - but he never really became an atheist, except in the sense of not believing in the Christian god. I have no desire to commit the "no true Scotsman" fallacy here, but I think it is nonsensical to call someone an atheist simply because they stop believing in one particular god or religion.

I read several of Lewis' books as a believer. As I recall, he came back to "the faith" because of what he saw as this universal sense of justice or morality across cultures and concluded that was the work of god. Seeing activities replicated in similar fashions across cultures and thus pointing to a god does not look to me like a conclusion drawn by an atheist (or a scientist for sure). Using that fractured logisc, why not conclude: we all get hungry and eat, so it's proof of a god?

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If xian hell really exists, the stench of the burning billions of us should be a constant, putrid reminder to the handful of heavenward xians how loving your god is. - neopagan

I read several of Lewis' books as a believer. As I recall, he came back to "the faith" because of what he saw as this universal sense of justice or morality across cultures and concluded that was the work of god. Seeing activities replicated in similar fashions across cultures and thus pointing to a god does not look to me like a conclusion drawn by an atheist (or a scientist for sure). Using that fractured logisc, why not conclude: we all get hungry and eat, so it's proof of a god?

Or more sophisticated and directly: The cultures that valued cooperation, communication, learning, and respect are the ones that grew to a size to have records. SO when going over records....guess what you are going to find.

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An Omnipowerful God needed to sacrifice himself to himself (but only for a long weekend) in order to avert his own wrath against his own creations who he made in a manner knowing that they weren't going to live up to his standards.

Atheists wish to show the religious that the religious are suffering from a delusion.

This is an inaccurate statement. Not all atheists seek to do this. I don't even think a majority of them do.

I don't care to show the religious that they are suffering from a delusion -- at least not until the religious try to show me that I am denying that their god exists.

This forum invites theists to come discuss the book (WWGHA), and consequently for theists to discuss their beliefs. Ergo, the only place I routinely contest the statements of theists is on this forum. In the offline world I rarely have theists trying to convert me to their beliefs. Perhaps that's because I emit an appropriate rational vibe.

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John 14:2 :: In my Father's house are many mansions: if it were not so, I would have told you. I go to prepare a place for you.

Atheists wish to show the religious that the religious are suffering from a delusion.

This is an inaccurate statement. Not all atheists seek to do this. I don't even think a majority of them do.

I don't care to show the religious that they are suffering from a delusion -- at least not until the religious try to show me that I am denying that their god exists.

This forum invites theists to come discuss the book (WWGHA), and consequently for theists to discuss their beliefs. Ergo, the only place I routinely contest the statements of theists is on this forum. In the offline world I rarely have theists trying to convert me to their beliefs. Perhaps that's because I emit an appropriate rational vibe.

I'm tall, big, and ugly, and apparently scary looking. All the repel I need. I worked many years to look like this. When I was younger people thought I was "pretty" (from how young I looked), and some based on looks alone, thought I was shy, and timid. I wasn't.

-Nam

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Things I've said here:

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I only have a filter for people who do not consistently beg to be belittled, ridiculed, insulted, and demeaned.

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I may believe people, as a whole, should be treated fairly but I also believe those same people are idiots.

Okay, well I've read through the posts and no one has referenced any specific work s/he has read that is written with a pro-God/Catholic perspective.

Still looking for other people to do your work for you?

What is it about Catholics that they insist on this? We had a particularly rabid female Catholic on here not so long ago who claimed to have spent many years studying all this guff and was most upset when it was pointed out that none of it was evidence for anything except prepositional-ism.

Mind you, I suspect the realisation that they've wasted a lifetime will inevitably result in angry denial.

Okay, well I've read through the posts and no one has referenced any specific work s/he has read that is written with a pro-God/Catholic perspective.

What is it about Catholics that they insist on this? We had a particularly rabid female Catholic on here not so long ago who claimed to have spent many years studying all this guff and was most upset when it was pointed out that none of it was evidence for anything except prepositional-ism.

It is a variant of the internet intellectual snotball meme that came along around 2004 -2006. "You can't be possible informed on the subject until you have read (insert snotballs favorite book on the subject). Read it and get back to me when you can have an INFORMED conversation."

The thing is, in a very few instances, this is correct. It is difficult to have an informed opinion on particular book or author without reading a chapter or two. However, on most subjects, there are no single definitive single book to understand said subject.

It is just a new 21rst century fallacy, composed of poisoning the well, appeal to authority, ad hom, and mostly no true Scotsman.

I don't expect a theist to have read the works of Dawkins or Hitchens, unless they are disparaging those works. And even then, I don't expect them to have read them in full.

As far as I am concerned, I don't need to read the reams of apologia describing the wonders of the Emperors new clothes, and why they must necessarily exist because of Ontology, to point out the fact that there is no evidence the he is wearing anything.

« Last Edit: September 16, 2013, 08:49:25 AM by Hatter23 »

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An Omnipowerful God needed to sacrifice himself to himself (but only for a long weekend) in order to avert his own wrath against his own creations who he made in a manner knowing that they weren't going to live up to his standards.